The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
smithsonianmag.com
The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
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Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#2It’s important to remember that this was a specific policy decision. Earl Butz[1] famously said to our farmers “Get big or get out”.
I don’t have the background or inclination to prove it but my conviction is the death of the small town, and the ancillary costs like the meth and opioid epidemics can be traced directly to the “fence row to fence row” approach he pushed forward and still exists today.
[later] thanks nickt for pointing out I left off the footnote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#3It’s important to remember that this was a specific policy decision. Earl Butz[1] famously said to our farmers “Get big or get out”. I don’t have the background or inclination to prove it but my conviction is the death of the small town, and the ancillary costs like the meth and opioid epidemics can be traced directly to the “fence row to fence row” approach he pushed forward and still exists today. [later] thanks ni…
[1] Earl Butz - Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (1971 - 1976)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#4This is sort of sad, because - 350 years!
I think the other side of the coin is the places stagnation and outright decay have set in, like many inner cities or rustbelt regions that have not thrived. The opposite would be places like tokyo where everything is turned over rapidly and the new is ousted to be almost immediately replaced by the newer and newest.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#5This is sort of sad, because - 350 years! I think the other side of the coin is the places stagnation and outright decay have set in, like many inner cities or rustbelt regions that have not thrived. The opposite would be places like tokyo where everything is turned over rapidly and the new is ousted to be almost immediately replaced by the newer and newest.
It's interesting to see that the same thing has been happening on the other side of the Atlantic. I grew up in a farming community in County Clare, Ireland (~1980 - 1999) and many farms there have been abandoned due to the low returns from agriculture.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#6This is sort of sad, because - 350 years! I think the other side of the coin is the places stagnation and outright decay have set in, like many inner cities or rustbelt regions that have not thrived. The opposite would be places like tokyo where everything is turned over rapidly and the new is ousted to be almost immediately replaced by the newer and newest.
Thanks for introducing me to that concept, enjoyed that.
We need a new New Deal w/ UBI and just invest in ourselves.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#7From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming.
From a personal standpoint, the sensible thing to do is to scale it down to subsistence gardening for yourself and your family. That is what my family does. I remember, when I was still young, they still used to sell some produce. Nowadays it is entirely consumed by the family or gifted out. The benefit of this, is that you are free from economic demand. You grow whatever you please, because you want to have it at the dinner table.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#8It’s important to remember that this was a specific policy decision. Earl Butz[1] famously said to our farmers “Get big or get out”. I don’t have the background or inclination to prove it but my conviction is the death of the small town, and the ancillary costs like the meth and opioid epidemics can be traced directly to the “fence row to fence row” approach he pushed forward and still exists today. [later] thanks ni…
How much farming do you need if you cut out biofuels and some feed corn for industrial scale meat production? Lots of poor ag policy decisions over the last century, but also I think a a bit of make work in certain circumstances.
When speaking to opponents of utility scale solar on vast tracts of farmland, you see this when they’re upset about the land no longer being used to farm, but the farmer can make more from solar or wind than farming. Lots of emotion from tradition and history to make peace with. Change is the only constant, and everything dies eventually.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#9It's hard to support the idea of inefficient farming just out of pure nostalgia but I think there's something else lost when these small family farms die out. I imagine large commercial farms aren't going to experiment as much or adapt to changing conditions.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#10This is sort of sad, because - 350 years! I think the other side of the coin is the places stagnation and outright decay have set in, like many inner cities or rustbelt regions that have not thrived. The opposite would be places like tokyo where everything is turned over rapidly and the new is ousted to be almost immediately replaced by the newer and newest.
The length of its existence is interesting, but by todays standards, the farm may have been just as unsustainable as it was at its onset.
Notably, the Smithsonian article only asks about recent changes affecting the farm.
Slavery was common in Massachusetts through 1700s.
If the farm was made sustainable through slave labor in its first 100 years, it would have avoided the same concerns that the article says are doing it in now: dependable and low cost labor.